How to have better arguments online • Hacker News Board

Re: How to have better arguments online

#21

Post by austincheney » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

slx26 wrote: post #16

Let's imagine we have a group of 100 people and we want them to reach consensus on a controverted topic. Let's apply a divide and conquer approach: pair people 1 on 1, and if they can agree (even if the agreement involves different resolutions depending on personal preferences), you join them with another group of 2 and repeat the process. Now, why doesn't this work? Well, this could work if people's opinions were st…

If it’s 100 random people off the street serving as a fair representation of the larger population there are some fair assumptions you can make.

1. Half that population, 50, represent people who abhor originality in any form. This could be due to low intelligence, poor focus, loneliness, or a variety of other reasons. This group will accept any opinion that binds people together, such as knowingly false appeals to popularity.

2. About 12 of the people left over are narcissistic. They do not have a personal opinion on any argument. Instead they will identify that former 50 and do what they can to influence them, which often means fighting with other narcissistic people to build tribal factions of echo chambers.

3. About another 12 people are outsiders. They don’t care about any of the arguments presented. They will sit in a corner and do whatever the fuck they want. These are the hermits and are social as necessary for resources.

4. About 8 of the people are super objective. Weighted distribution of evidence and data matter most. These are your scientist. Nobody listens to them. These people are a pain in the ass to the sheep and wolves.

5. About another 8 are influencers. They spread ideas around and keep people informed. Sometimes they might even offer an original contribution, but it’s rare.

6. The final 10 people are comedians.

Really though, the actual subject of any argument provided to that population is irrelevant. The motives of the various participants dictate the acceptance, validity, and attention of any subject.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#22

Post by SunlightEdge » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

I think learning to ignore posts that are or will become toxic is a helpful skill to learn. I have similar feelings about certain newspapers & articles too.

As for discussion, no one ever wins an argument in my opinion. So whenever a discussion looks like it's heading that way the best thing to do is to drop it. Discussion is at its best when it's two open minded people politely exploring ideas

Re: How to have better arguments online

#23

Post by i_am_the_ai » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 1:28 PM UTC

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #7

prox wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes comment to show a bit of effort, when I agree with someone, like yours superbcarrot, something more than an easy upvote. Not everything has to be a discussion.

There's a fine line between appreciative agreement and something that just decreases the signal to noise ratio though.

Wrong!

Re: How to have better arguments online

#24

Post by Barrin92 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #20

If you state your opinion in a room with 3 other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion are probably low. Especially since people self-select who to congregate with in rooms. If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty. Conflict is almost…

to a degree being able to associate with like-minded peers is good for peace of mind, but the author is right that conflict is also productive.

This also applies in the real world. The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis, the political community.

Over the last few decades we've seen a trend of this privatisation and segmentation or what Michael Sandel called 'skyboxification'. Everyone sorts into their own group, often commercially, rather than having shared experiences with people from different walks of life.

The promise of the internet was that it would be easier for different people to have these interactions. It's sad that in reality it has devolved into a shouting match (it should be noted very often between people who are actually alike and engage in some Girardian terror of small differences, rather than between genuine strangers)

Re: How to have better arguments online

#25

Post by uniqueid » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

mellosouls wrote: post #4

This (good article) from The Guardian, who in their ludicrously-titled "Comment is Free" section and others ban discussions on any articles and opinion pieces they fear dissent on. In keeping with that - I note there is no comment section on this piece...

  they fear dissent

There are other explanations than that 'they fear dissent'. There's what you say, and there's how you say it. It reflects poorly on a serious publication if their comments section is full of insults and slurs, regardless of whether the comments support leftwing or rightwing causes.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#26

Post by _qulr » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #24

_qulr wrote: post #20

If you state your opinion in a room with 3 other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion are probably low. Especially since people self-select who to congregate with in rooms. If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty. Conflict is almost…

to a degree being able to associate with like-minded peers is good for peace of mind, but the author is right that conflict is also productive. This also applies in the real world. The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis , the political community. Over the last few decades we've seen a trend of this privatisation and segmentation or what Mic…

> the author is right that conflict is also productive

Could you explain why?

> The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis, the political community.

The Greeks put Socrates to death, so call me skeptical.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#27

Post by Viliam1234 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 1:58 PM UTC

SunlightEdge wrote: post #22

I think learning to ignore posts that are or will become toxic is a helpful skill to learn. I have similar feelings about certain newspapers & articles too. As for discussion, no one ever wins an argument in my opinion. So whenever a discussion looks like it's heading that way the best thing to do is to drop it. Discussion is at its best when it's two open minded people politely exploring ideas

People have this instict that "silence is consent".

Which makes sense in some circumstances. Like, when the whole group is paying attention to the same speaker, the speaker says something, there is an opportunity to object, and no one objects... you could conclude that either everyone agrees, or perhaps the speaker has so much social power that no one dares to object. -- So the idea is backed by either consent or power.

This doesn't work on internet, where millions of people keep saying millions of things, and there is simply no time to respond to all of that. So you see something that was said, publicly, and no one objected... but that doesn't imply consent nor power.

On the other hand, you can have an idea that 99% of people agree with, and the 1% would think twice to oppose it under their real name, but with anonymity someone is going to write "lol, if you think this you are a moron", and it's their comment that will likely remain unopposed. And one such person can make such comments on thousand places each day, if they are sufficiently obsessed with the topic.

Our instincts are built of some assumptions that no longer work on internet. One possible approach is to learn new skills. Another possibility would be to design online interaction so that it better matches our instincts. (For example, any comment would disappear after one day, or after it was seen by 50 people.) This could potentially be interesting, but there is little financial incentive to explore this, because companies optimise for advertisements and virality, not user experience.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#28

Post by natmaka » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

Barrin92 wrote: post #24

_qulr wrote: post #20

If you state your opinion in a room with 3 other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion are probably low. Especially since people self-select who to congregate with in rooms. If you state your opinion in a virtual "room" with 300 million other people, the chance that at least 1 of those people vehemently disagrees with your opinion is a certainty. Conflict is almost…

to a degree being able to associate with like-minded peers is good for peace of mind, but the author is right that conflict is also productive. This also applies in the real world. The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis , the political community. Over the last few decades we've seen a trend of this privatisation and segmentation or what Mic…

There is a middle ground: alone is not enough, and too much is too much.

IMHO every really useful-and-not-harming work happens thanks to a small group of workers (where a little bit of 'conflict', let's say disagreement about a given subject, is often useful because it creates emulation).

A major promise of the Internet may be to alleviate the need for such a group members to be in the same place at the same time.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#29

Post by SuoDuanDao » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

_qulr wrote: post #26

Barrin92 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to a degree being able to associate with like-minded peers is good for peace of mind, but the author is right that conflict is also productive. This also applies in the real world. The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis , the political community. Over the last few decades we've seen a trend of this privatisation and segmentation or what Mic…

> the author is right that conflict is also productive Could you explain why? > The actual Greek meaning of the word idiot is 'private person'. Someone who had withdrawn from the life in the polis, the political community. The Greeks put Socrates to death, so call me skeptical.

Regarding conflict, I think it's certainly true that some ideas are so poorly understood that it can be useful to have someone else approach the same idea from a different perspective, so as to 'pin it down' as it were. Martin's 'The Opposable Mind' is a great discussion of this dynamic, the book describes a single person changing their mind on a topic deliberately so as to 'grasp' it but a similar dynamic can work with two people.

Of course, disagreement doesn't necessarily mean conflict if the rules of civil discussion are agreed upon. I wish we had a way to filter our bubbles by what we find acceptable behaviour when disagreeing as opposed to what we agree with.

Re: How to have better arguments online

#30

Post by slx26 » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #21

slx26 wrote: post #16

Let's imagine we have a group of 100 people and we want them to reach consensus on a controverted topic. Let's apply a divide and conquer approach: pair people 1 on 1, and if they can agree (even if the agreement involves different resolutions depending on personal preferences), you join them with another group of 2 and repeat the process. Now, why doesn't this work? Well, this could work if people's opinions were st…

If it’s 100 random people off the street serving as a fair representation of the larger population there are some fair assumptions you can make. 1. Half that population, 50, represent people who abhor originality in any form. This could be due to low intelligence, poor focus, loneliness, or a variety of other reasons. This group will accept any opinion that binds people together, such as knowingly false appeals to po…

Yeah, and here I was talking about arguments and consensus when most people are indeed playing other games on top of it. Good points.